Armed men wearing military-style jackets abducted three foreign United Nations election workers in broad daylight in Kabul on Thursday as vote-counting ended in Afghanistan’s landmark election.
The trio, an Irish woman, a woman from Kosovo and a Filipino man, were pulled from their UN-marked car in front of a UN compound in a busy west Kabul neighbourhood, UN officials and witnesses said.
They are employed by the joint UN-Afghan election commission, which oversaw Afghanistan’s first presidential election on October 9.
The kidnappers forced the three out of their car in front of the UN compound, beat up their driver and bundled the trio into a black Toyota four-wheel-drive vehicle just after 12.30pm local time, officials and witnesses said.
The driver, who was left behind as the kidnappers tore away at high speed, sounded the alarm.
”The [UN workers] were stopped in Karte-Parwan neighbourhood by armed men in camouflage military uniforms driving a four-by-four vehicle and were kidnapped,” Interior Ministry spokesperson Lutfullah Mashal said.
The kidnappers were armed with AK-47 rifles, said another intelligence official, speaking on condition on anonymity.
A group calling itself the Army of Muslims claimed responsibility, Arabic satellite television station Al-Jazeera reported.
”Fighters from the Army of Muslims have kidnapped the three UN workers,” the group’s leader, Akbar Agha, told one of the station’s correspondents in Islamabad, without making any demands.
Al-Jazeera also quoted the group’s spokesperson Ishaq Manzur as saying that ”the three hostages … have been taken out of Kabul” while the group’s leaders met to decide their fate.
The group’s demands will be announced following the meeting, he added.
Al-Jazeera said the group, with links to the country’s ousted hardline Islamic Taliban rulers, had already kidnapped a Turkish worker in Afghanistan in November 2003.
Aid workers, troops targeted
Fighters loyal to the Taliban have been waging a bloody insurgency in Afghanistan, targeting foreign and Afghan aid workers, troops and officials.
They have killed 34 UN and aid workers, four of them foreigners, over the past two years, said Nick Downie, a security adviser for a coalition of aid organisations.
Another 60 election workers and sub-contractors, including three foreigners, have been killed in violence in Afghanistan this year.
But the abduction was the first of a foreign UN or aid worker in Kabul since the Taliban’s fall three years ago, and drew disturbing parallels with the spate of kidnappings in Iraq.
”I would say it’s a targeted abduction,” Downie said.
The possibility that it was a copycat-style abduction imitating events in Iraq ”could not be ruled out”, he said.
Foreign peacekeepers and Afghan troops and police launched a full-scale search for the abducted trio in several Kabul neighbourhoods and the Paghman valley west of the city.
Troops threw a security cordon around the capital, blocking all main roads in and out of the city and setting up checkpoints.
Apache helicopters from the Nato-led international security assistance force joined the search.
The US embassy had warned this month that foreigners in Kabul could be targets for kidnapping.
The abduction comes five days after a suicide bomber attacked a group of foreign peacekeepers buying carpets on Kabul’s famous ”Chicken Street” shopping strip.
An American woman (23) and an Afghan girl (11) were killed and three Icelandic peacekeepers were injured in Saturday’s attack, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.
Vote count complete
The abduction took place as election commission officials announced the completion of the drawn-out presidential vote count.
US-backed interim leader Hamid Karzai won in a landslide with more than 55% of the vote and a 39,1% lead, avoiding a potentially destabilising second-round run-off.
The election commission must still review the findings of two separate inquiries, including one by a panel of three UN-appointed experts, into alleged irregularities before it can certify the ballot as free and fair.
Several of Karzai’s disgruntled rivals had claimed widespread fraud and threatened to boycott the poll.
At least three opposition candidates expressed dissatisfaction this week with the UN-appointed panel’s inquiry, although Karzai has said he expects to be able to confirm his victory by Sunday. — Sapa-AFP